Kate Berry

PHH Corp., the largest non-bank lender, abruptly replaced chief executive officer Jerome Selitto with chief operating officer Glen A. Messina on Wednesday, weeks after a failed bond offering and an S&P downgrade.

The much-maligned practice forces long-delinquent borrowers who are "in limbo" to decide whether they really want to save their homes, says a specialist in the trenches.

LendingTree's findings have not reassured mortgage industry members worried about regulatory efforts to raise the minimum amount home buyers must put down upfront.

The mortgage market is expected to change dramatically in the coming year as some of the largest banks cede loan-origination market share to regional banks and non-bank mortgage lenders.

The California attorney general's lawsuit against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac raises questions about preemption and the FHFA's authority, but seems unlikely to produce revelations about foreclosures.

The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that it overestimated home sales by nearly 15% last year, an indication that the housing market is in even worse shape.

Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae's chief economist, is warning that the United States has a 40% chance of slipping into a double-dip recession in 2012.

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto alleges that the processor fraudulently notarized 4,000 documents a day and demanded kickbacks from foreclosure attorneys.

Former radio DJ Steve Streit has shepherded prepaid marketer Green Dot from its early days to its hard-won Fed blessing to buy a bank.

A series of hush-hush deals have shifted the responsibility for servicing hundreds of billions of dollars in troubled loans to special servicers of Fannie's choosing.

The former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program hammered the Obama Administration and Treasury Department Tuesday night at a panel discussion on the foreclosure crisis, saying fears of a political backlash led to the administration's tepid response to the housing crisis.

The backlog of real estate-owned homes held by banks and the government is "staggering," Fitch Inc. said this week, and the disposal of those distressed properties in the next two years will depend largely on the strategies taken by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Mortgage industry members are applauding Congressional efforts to raise the guarantee fees that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge lenders, saying the fee increases could help bring private investors back into the mortgage market.

Bank of America's proposed $315 million settlement with mortgage-securities investors will have to be approved by Judge Jed Rakoff, who last week blocked a Citigroup settlement with the SEC over securities-related claims.

Small but profitable Wedbush Bank, a sister company of Wedbush Securities, is the rare example of a thriving bank linked to a brokerage firm. Now the bank is looking to expand by scouting for an acquisition along the West Coast.

Government officials are likely to release large banks from some liability for how they handled delinquent Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgages, as part of a settlement with the largest mortgage servicers, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp. and other large lenders are fleeing the reverse mortgage industry, leaving specialty lenders with more business than they know what to do with.

Government-issued payment cards can be fraught with peril, provoking the ire of unemployed and disabled consumers and their advocates, who are increasingly sensitive to being charged bank fees of any kind.

It's a sign of the dismal state of the housing market that a combined $14 billion bailout in the third quarter for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac no longer merits front-page headlines.

The foreclosure review process mandated by a federal consent order is turning out to be far more punitive and costly than banks and mortgage servicers initially thought, industry sources say.